What does a website cost? Part I

12 Apr 2016

How much does a website cost?

by Frida Nyvall

That is the question many of our clients ask themselves when the time has come to update or set up a website for their company, organisation or association. For someone acquiring their very first website it can be quite a difficult question.

In this the first part of the series about how much a website costs, we will answer the question why websites can have different prices.

For someone just about to aquire their very first website this can be quite difficult to answer. Perhaps you recall the stories about a teenage relative who built websites for people in their spare time during the early 2000s. Then it can not be so difficult. How much can it cost? Not more than a few hundred dollars … Or?

Differences between websites

It is the same difference comparing a cheap website to an expensive one, like comparing a cheap suit from Target to an expensive one from Armani. Like in most other cases you will “get what you pay for”. The problem for the uninitiated is to know what precisely it is worth paying for in this case. Something that every buyer, however, usually have a good handle on is their own business and its needs, and the purpose of the new website. And that is exactly what constitutes the specification for your new website.

A hut or a castle?

The difference in cost, size and comfort of living between building and living in a hut, compared with that of a castle is something most people can understand the meaning of. However, it is not uncommon for inexperienced clients to underestimate what it takes to realize the website or app they want to build. One imagines a castle, and hope that it will be built with the same budget and in the same length of time as a hut.

Neuschwanstein Castle or a hut?

Time is Money

To build a house or sew a suit requires materials – but a website consists only of pixels and those are free, aren’t they? To get pixels to be drawn on the screen and behave in the desired manner, you will in addition to capable hardware and software (PCs, servers, and applications) also require knowledge of design and web development, as well as time for the programming of the code and the files that the website consists of. Because time is money, the cost of the website increases with the number of hours required to build it.

A larger and more complex website or web application takes more hours to complete, and will therefore be more expensive.